Editor:
Re: I should be allowed to block the street spots at my Burnaby home, NOW Letters
To Glen Powers:
To be quite frank, it's actually rather rude to block off the street in front of your home with traffic pylons just to save a parking space you feel you are entitled to.
I agree with Chris Campbell 100% on this. The last time I checked, your right to claim any space, whether it’s privately owned or public space for that matter, well your rights end at your property line.
You cannot, or rather should not, claim any space in the public domain such as the street in front of your home simply because it is more convenient for you, or for your parents. Telling someone they can't park there and, even worse, by blocking off the street in front is quite ignorant.
Talk about entitlement indeed.
There is this unwritten golden rule that you seem to not understand, and that is "first come, first served" or "the early bird gets the worm.” We don't care about your parents’ mobility issues, or the fact that you don't have a designated spot in the back of your fourplex.
That's life. Deal with it.
If your 70-plus-year-old parents are that mobility challenged, where they can't walk a block to their parked car, it might be time for them consider more accessible lodging, like an elderly care home. It is a tad presumptuous Mr. Powers that you seem to forget that other people on your block may have health or mobility issues as well, you don't know their lives or what they are going through because, trust me, it's not just your family that has challenges.
There are several solutions or rather suggestions you could look into, and those include:
1: Get rid of one of your vehicles. Downsize your carbon footprint and do your part to fight climate change and help mitigate the extreme heat waves that are now becoming more common place because people seem to think that every member of your family should drive a car instead of looking into other forms of transportation. Sell your car. Unless you have like eight children and you need two vehicles, then you don't really have an excuse to have more than one vehicle. Hey, it would help to create another spot for parking on the street, would it not? Free up some space. And just think of the savings you'll have. You could move out of that fourplex and into a single-detached house in no time. Take your parents with you. That will free up three or four spots on the streets for the rest of us to park. You could then park in your own garage. How wonderful would that be? Food for thought.
2: Talk to your neighbour who has the parking privilege in the back of your fourplex to see if they would be willing to let you use their parking spot. Give them the same reasoning you put in your letter about why you deserve or are entitled for a parking spot. That is, if they don't laugh in your face and tell you to get lost. Heck, maybe your parents should do the same. But, having said that, bear in mind that just because they (your neighbours) have dedicated parking (or a spot they created in the back alley), doesn't necessarily mean you do as well, nor does it give you the right to quadrant off a section of a public street in front of your fourplex house, which I assume you don’t own? If houses had dedicated parking spots for each residential house, there would be lines on the roadway with your house number painted inside the marked section. The fact that there aren't any means you have no right to create your own space just because you said so. Sorry buddy, but Chris Campbell is right and you're in the wrong on this one.
3. Go door to door around your neighbourhood, and have everyone sign a petition to submit to the city so they can look into the feasibility of creating permit parking zones for your neighbourhood. That would eliminate the "out-of-blocker" parkers, or the elusive "park-and-darters" using your street as a dumping ground for their vehicle during the day for whatever reason. Granted, with permit parking comes the added cost of purchasing a permit. It would drastically reduce the amount of vehicles on your street. It works quite well in the West End downtown and other areas around the city of Vancouver. But don’t start complaining about the cost of the permit parking afterwards and how it's just another added expense to obtain all the permits.
4: Can't get enough signatures on your petition to mandate permit parking from your neighbours? Well then, you just may as well run for mayor, or at the very least become a city (councillor) and table a bylaw proposal to change the regulations around street parking for your area.
And there are plenty of other suggestions l could recommend to you, but I'll stop it there. You know, sometimes in life, you just have to grin and bear it and suck it up.
If I was a neighbour of yours. I'd run your traffic pylons over with my vehicle every time I saw them out in the street, just to spite you and proceed to park in "your spot" for being so arrogant. Then add insult to injury, I'd sue you for the damage done to my vehicle because of your idea to section off and cause obstruction of a roadway by placing your self-entitled pylons of rage out in a public street that scratched up my door and possibly deflated a tire, and subsequently ruin my life.
Mr. Powers, have yourself a wonderful day.
Kyle Isaac, Burnaby
